


The Winds of Change

by Animus_Vox



Series: They All Grow Up [2]
Category: How to Train Your Dragon (Movies), Rise of the Guardians (2012)
Genre: Death, F/M, Gen, Implied/Referenced Character Death, M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-07-24
Updated: 2014-07-24
Packaged: 2018-02-10 05:29:56
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,602
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2012760
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Animus_Vox/pseuds/Animus_Vox
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Hiccup has always been a believer in everything except himself. Someone who calls himself the Boogeyman tells him something about the Man in the Moon, and it doesn't make much sense to him at all, but a name does stick out. Jack Frost. Where is Jack Frost?</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This is being written in parallel with "While You're Still Young". They are companion pieces in a series. The Winds of Change deals with everything that happens after Hiccup's gotten older, and things have...pretty clearly...taken a sharp turn into the melancholy.
> 
> PLEASE NOTE if you're squicked by gore, there's cut-and-dry clinical descriptions of injuries from a car accident. Not TOO graphic, but I'm tacking a warning here that's chapter-specific, just in case. So yeah.

His awakening was sluggish, like waking up under deep water with cotton in his ears and his lungs full of liquid. There was a tight pressure wrapped around his chest, compressing him and making it difficult to breathe. He saw blurry blackness in the edges of his vision and, until he became more aware, saw the world in monochrome. He couldn't hear much but the dull, muffled mumbling of something. The first thing he became aware of was a song.

_Time always unwinding_

_All these deadlines in my mind_

_Seeds and dreams we planted,_

_Took for granted, didn't prove_

He looked around his hospital bed, the strangely somber, upbeat song sounding tinny from the hospital room speakers, but still able to be heard. _Hospital._ That explained why there wasn't much color to look at. Assessing even further, he realized his chest felt tight because there was bandaging around it, and it was around his arm as well, and...a lot of parts of him, really. Fuck. He was a mummy. What _happened?_

Perhaps strangest of all was, when he sat up, he felt no pain. The brunet shook his head, raking his fingers back through his hair experimentally, touching at his own face. Piece by piece of himself, he patted at his body, pressing and prodding, checking if the application of pressure would reveal something he was missing. The only answer he got was, when he lifted the sheets, he noticed he was missing his left leg from just below the knee. That was _something_ missing.

He never stopped to think too much about all of this information - or at least not how he was categorizing it. He was acutely unaware of how distressed most people would truly be if they woke up in a hospital bed, wrapped up and in a mess, never mind the missing limb. Since he felt no pain to speak of, he removed any needles in his veins and just addressed the bandaging around his chest and limbs as an annoyance to be rid of later. He used the edge of the bed to balance himself clumsily as he maneuvered the room. Upon reaching the foot end of the cot, he noticed the clipboard hanging on the end of it that was a summary. Of him. Tipping his head curiously, the brunet plucked it off the metal hook where it was resting, and carefully sat down to read through the contents.

It took a bit of work to decipher the doctor's shorthand, but the most important parts were neatly typed out, probably for the convenience of the nursing staff. _Hiccup Horrendous Haddock III. 23 years old. Born October 18, 1992. 6'1". White. Male. Hair color brown. Eye color green..._

Okay. Yes. He nursed at a gentle aching in the back of his head as he sucked in all of that information, frowning at the paper. He remembered that, yes. His name was Hiccup. He was born in Portland, Maine, to a mother who left when he was two and a father whom he'd felt always expected a lot and gave very little.  _Snap, snap, snap:_ little pieces of his life fell into place in his mind. Hiccup remembered more and more as the seconds flowed. He was going for his engineering degree straight out of high school, he'd been dating a girl named Astrid - he'd _loved_ Astrid - didn't he still love Astrid? - Yes, they had been planning on moving into their own place together, after college, if student loans were forgiving and they could save up enough money.

That still didn't tell him what happened, though. That was just about _him,_ not about how he _got_ here. Where was the part on this file where it said something about _that?_

Well, he didn't have to look far, thankfully: that was the next section on the paper. And that was a bit harder to decipher, because his injuries were specifically written out in the doctor's shorthand, but from what Hiccup could tell, he had not only lost his leg, but also suffered three broken ribs (one had pierced his lung), a shattered collarbone, a broken arm, and several lacerations caused by what the patient file only notated as "debris." From a car accident.

 ** _Smack._** That brought everything back. And as he jumped from one memory to another, thinking upon it all and filing it away, Hiccup finally knew pain in the form of a tense, bitter, _throbbing_ headache. He pressed at his temples, buried his face in his hands, and tried _desperately_ not to cry. The words of a nurse passing through his room were what alerted him to attention after several moments longer to himself. She was talking to someone on the other end of a bluetooth conversation with the earpiece wrapped around her ear and pressed to her cheek.

"I know. It's sad," she sighed, coming over to Hiccup's bed and beginning to pack up all the equipment that was around it. Hiccup watched her, his cheeks a bit wet, eyebrows knotted together in confusion. "At least you weren't here to see the dad and the girlfriend. I've seen a lot of crying families and all, but _golly._ That poor girl. And the father was just beside himself. I've never seen a man like that cry so hard."

It was odd to think of his father crying. Like, at all. Aside from that, the most he could bring himself to do was just blink owlishly. "Umm." Hiccup croaked her way, still shy, "Excuse me."

The nurse didn't seem to hear him. She continued about her business, adjusting a few wrinkles out of her scrubs as she began to fix Hiccup's bed like he wasn't sitting on it _right now._ "I hope they can find peace in all this. I don't like to think of it as that poor boy just becoming another statistic against drunk drivers. He's obviously touched the lives of so many people. I just can't really separate all that out, you know?"

"...Hey," Hiccup frowned deeply at her back, "Lady. I'm _right here._ "

"I don't think he and the father were very close," she went on, "maybe that's why he was so upset. I hope he got the chance to tell his son how much he meant to him."

What the _fuck?_ Why was she using a fucking _past tense?_

"Excuse me!" Hiccup exclaimed, practically _yelling_ it. The nurse smoothed away the last of the wrinkles on his bed, took all of the equipment that was no longer needed, and went right for the door. Hiccup, in his rush for answers, got up from his spot, frantically balancing against the bedpost and looking for something a little more mobile. "Hey, I'm _talking_ to you, come _back!_ " No luck. She left. Hiccup smacked the bedpost with his palm. "Goddammit!"

What was this? Was he completely invisible? Was he -

Oh. And then it clicked.

There was a brief moment where Hiccup distinctly felt like a walking movie cliche. He thought about it, and thought about it, and in the wake of the information overload he had just experienced about his own past - aside from everything else - the most he could register was pressing his lips into a bitter line, and uttering aloud: "Holy crow. I'm fucking dead."


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Who the hell is Pitch Black, and what does he want? The answers to Hiccup's burning questions, up next on Desperate Housewives!

" - Well, not quite." Were the words that answered back. Not expecting them, Hiccup _jolted_ with a shout, shoulders flinching up to his ears before he turned to the source of the noise. The sight that rewarded him was that of a tall man with dark, dead-looking flesh, dressed head to toe in a black that matched his hair. Hiccup stared at him, eyes flicking up and down, and after a moment he said:

"Who the hell are you? The Grim Reaper?"

The man's lips curled up into a smile that wasn't quite menacing, but still left Hiccup feeling uneasy, showing off fanged teeth in the process. He shook his head at the brunet in an endearing way. "If I could do all this," he said, gesturing to the hospital bed and the room around them, "I would be sure to leave no chance of someone coming back."

Hiccup narrowed his eyes at the other suspiciously. "...So...?"

His visitor looked surprised. "Did Jack never tell you?"

" _Who?_ " Who the hell was Jack? Hiccup didn't know any Jack.

That seemed to give the man a brightness in his life. He began to pace the edge of the room, steepling his fingers together. "You don't remember? Oh, my. This should be interesting."

Hiccup frowned deeply - well, now that the man had _mentioned_ something, it was bothering him, and he was _thinking_ about it. Jack...Jack...

He pressed at the side of his head, grumbling irritably. His head hurt too much to hammer out the details, but...he recalled _something_ about a Guardian...? Someone who had been with him his whole life, watching out for him...

"...Jack Frost...?"

The man looked almost disappointed. "Spoke too soon," he murmured, before turning to face Hiccup with a smooth smirk. "Indeed. Is it coming back to you, now? Oh - here." He flicked a hand out, and to Hiccup's shock, tendrils of something black, alive and scratchy slithered up to him, and smoothly wedged beneath all of his bandages, wrapping about his whole body to do so. With outward flicks from each tentacle, the bindings were sliced off and fell to the floor. Hiccup rubbed absently at his chest, lips pressed thin in thought. Was that... _sand?_

"'Fresh-killed corpse' isn't a good look on our little game-changer," the stranger cooed.

Hiccup watched him warily. "This still doesn't explain who you are," he pointed out.

"So it doesn't!" It earned him a smile, and Hiccup didn't like it. He felt like he was back in school and this man was the least-favorite teacher that always treated him like he was a few years younger than he actually was.

The next time the stranger spoke up, it was from behind him and not in front of him, and Hiccup only saw the flash of shadows as he melted out of sight. When he turned around, the man was only a few feet away from him. "If I give you a hint, I wonder if you'll guess?" He supposed. He walked slowly around Hiccup in a circle, which choked closer and closer to the brunet himself, making him sit down and grip the end of the hospital bed when he grew increasingly uncomfortable.

" _I am the one hiding under your bed,_ " the tall man recited, fangs gleaming as he peered at Hiccup with coin-gold eyes, " _Teeth ground sharp, and eyes glowing red._ "

It took him a minute, eyes narrowed in concentration. This was a concept he had to look back into because it wasn't something Hiccup ever really thought of, but he remembered... " - You're the Boogeyman?"

The dead-colored man snapped his fingers and smiled wide, placing his hands together when his congratulatory gestures came to an end. "Pitch Black, if we're being proper."

Hiccup had never looked so unimpressed, he was sure. " _Really_?" He drawled, "You're the friggin' Boogeyman and your name is _Pitch Black?_ "

Pitch's expression flattened instantly. "Oh, go on then, get it out of your system," he said. Nothing about his tone suggested an invitation of playfulness. Nevertheless, Hiccup _had_ to laugh just a _little._

"I'm sorry," he said, "It's just, you have to admit, it's like...if you wanna sound less like a 'titular antagonist' character, there's like a hundred different other names you could've picked."

Pitch Black _sighed_ , leveling Hiccup with a pointedly unsurprised sort of look. "I'm beginning to see why Jack was so drawn to you." He almost yawned as he said it, like the revelation was predictable and more of an annoyance.

"Wait," Hiccup interrupted, frowning as he thought everything over. The Boogeyman lifted an eyebrow expectantly. "But - hang on." He waved a finger at Pitch, "Jack told me you didn't exist."

It earned him a look of muted hurt. Hiccup couldn't tell if it was genuine or sarcastic - and then Pitch went ahead and spoke. "What? Honestly - how _rude._ I don't know why he would say such a thing," he grumbled. Definitely sarcastic. He did, however, flick his hand in an interested gesture toward the brunet after changing locations in the room ( _again_ ). "But tell me...he told you all these stories throughout your childhood about Santa Clause, and the Easter Bunny, and the Tooth Fairy...and you never _once_ thought he was lying to you about the Boogeyman?" He fiddled absently with the hand sanitizer on the counter across from Hiccup's bed as he spoke, and went along over each item laid out there in turn.

The brunet thought about it for a long while. In truth, he wasn't quite sure _why_ he never believed in the Boogeyman - Pitch did have a point. Jack had been presenting him with proof, ever since he was little, that fantastic and magical things existed. But he'd only ever seen the good - he didn't really consider any of the bad. And yet there was no reason for Hiccup to believe the Boogeyman wasn't a thing. (It helped him to sleep better at night when he was younger, though. Had Jack thought of that, too?) Eventually, Hiccup concluded aloud in a murmur, "I guess I just didn't really want to believe."

"Ah, well," Pitch said with an easy smile, as he began to roll and twist his hands in little gestures, black sand gathering and churning in the air before him. "Hindsight is twenty-twenty, and all that." With what looked like a little bit of work, the sand compressed and shaped and molded until it became a very sturdy, very comfortable-looking wheelchair. The parts that would normally be metallic shone like heated black glass, and, curiously, when Hiccup reached out to touch, the seat felt smooth as silk.

"Shall we go for a stroll, Haddock?"

Hiccup looked at the wheelchair, and then at Pitch. His suspicion came back full force. "Go for a stroll where?"

"...Outside?" Pitch replied, shrugging dismissively. "Away from this awful place, surrounded by the grievous, sick, and dying?"

"You just got done telling me you're the thing that scares little kids at night for kicks, and you look like a reaper's agent out of a supernatural television series," Hiccup reminded him, like the man had already forgotten. "You seriously want me to _trust_ you?"

"Hiccup," Pitch sighed again, waving a dismissive hand, eyes half-lidded in sheer _boredom_. "If I really wanted to kill you, I would have done it already. I can promise you that as sure as the sun rises in the east."

"Well, excuse me for thinking this is kinda sketchy!" He replied back, "Just, y'know, how do I know you're not lying?"

"How do you know that I am?"

As Hiccup balked in response, he just stood patiently nearby, wheelchair still resting just by the brunet's bed. Hiccup considered telling the Boogeyman how the absence of an opposite wasn't a very solid argument, but dismissed it after realizing that his options at this point were pretty slim. He didn't know where Jack was, or any of the other Guardians, for that matter - Pitch was the one who was here, and he was offering him a quick way out. Hiccup had no doubt he would be in this hospital for a while more if he refused. He wasn't exactly thrilled about staying.

So, begrudgingly, he climbed into the wheelchair and settled. Pitch smiled at him.

"I'll give you something nicer once we're outside," he promised. "We should talk."


End file.
